It’s always the same cycle. Morning seeps through the curtains like it’s afraid to touch the room, brushing its light across empty bottles and crumpled cigarettes — remnants of another night he refused to forget. He’s there again, sprawled across the couch, one arm dangling lifelessly, the other clutching a bottle like it’s the last thing keeping him alive.

I move quietly, like a ghost inside a house that isn’t mine. Every sound feels like a sin — the clink of glass, the soft sweep of my steps across the floorboards. I clean the wreckage he leaves behind, piecing together silence before it shatters again. I’ve learned to do everything softly, like I owe the world my stillness.

Cooking has become an act of fear and necessity. I move slowly, careful not to wake the sleeping storm. The air smells faintly of smoke and old memories, and my hands tremble as I stir the pan. There are mornings when I don’t eat at all, but today, I’m lucky. He doesn’t wake. The floor stays still beneath me.

When I finally step outside, the wind tastes like escape. I pedal through the streets until the ache in my legs drowns out the noise in my head. The city blurs — strangers, traffic, sunlight flickering through trees — all passing me by like I was never really there.

School feels no different. It’s louder, brighter, but hollow in the same way. I sit in the corner of every classroom, eyes down, pretending to listen while my thoughts drift somewhere far away. The hours blur together — lectures, bells, faces. I exist between them, invisible and untouched. People look, sometimes, with curiosity or pity, I can’t tell which. I’ve stopped caring. I don’t let anyone close enough to decide.

When the day ends, I leave fast.

There’s a hill just outside the city — the kind of place the world forgets to notice. It’s quiet there. The grass dances with the wind, the sky stretches endlessly, and the city glows faintly beneath it all, distant and small. That hill has always felt like freedom, like breathing without the weight pressing against my ribs.

But lately, it isn’t just mine anymore.

Her car is there again — the one that always beats me to the view. She’s sitting on the hood, knees tucked to her chest, hoodie pulled over her head. She’s turned away, but I already know the reason for her silence. Her body speaks what her mouth doesn’t: exhaustion, sorrow, the ache of something she can’t say aloud.

I stop beside her, my bike falling softly against the grass. I shove my hands into my pockets, the sky stretching endlessly above us.

“He got you pretty bad today, huh?”

The words slip out quieter than I mean them to — a whisper caught between guilt and concern. She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. Her eyes meet mine for the briefest moment, and I see it — the pain I know too well, the kind that doesn’t scream anymore, the kind that just—exists.